


Inhale

by isoisoashley



Series: Breathe [1]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: A lot of them - Freeform, Angst, Emotions, Gen, Guilt, Hosptial, Overdose, Substance Abuse, at jack's bedside, some blame
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-27
Updated: 2017-08-27
Packaged: 2018-12-20 11:19:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11919801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/isoisoashley/pseuds/isoisoashley
Summary: 2009.Alicia Zimmermann is boarding a plane in Los Angeles for home when her husband calls."Get on the plane. There’s no quicker way home, someone will meet you at the gate. Don’t worry about your luggage. There’s been an accident. Jack’s… he’s in the hospital, Alicia. I’m on my way there now."





	Inhale

Alicia stands, hands pressed to the clear glass of the hospital window, timing her breath to the steady _beep beep_ of the heart monitor.

 

She’d flown out, two days ago, for a photo shoot—a reunion photo spread for a movie that had flopped in the 80s but had become a cult classic. The bonus had been that she had enjoyed, very much, the cast and crew during the filming and any chance for them all to get together was a joy instead of a chore. The only tricky bit had been the timing; with only a few days before Jack’s draft, she’d have to fly directly from the reunion dinner to meet with Bobby back in Montreal and hope that she had time to go home and change before they rushed to the Bell Center.

 

Instead, she’d been boarding a plane in L.A. when her husband had called her, tone harsh, words clipped.

 

_Get on the plane. There’s no quicker way home, someone will meet you at the gate. Don’t worry about your luggage. There’s been an accident. Jack’s… he’s in the hospital, Alicia. I’m on my way there now. The doctor says he’s got a good chance but I’ll text more when I know._

 

An accident. Her breathing hitched. An accident—she’d spent the flight with her heart in her throat. A car crash. A head injury on ice (of _course_ Jack would be practicing the night before the draft). A… mugging. Something, anything, other than this.

 

An overdose.

 

No one was sure it was an accident. No one was sure because no one could tell her exactly what had happened other than Jack had been found on the bathroom floor with a mostly empty bottle of his medication. He’d been drinking as well, his blood alcohol level over the legal limit.

 

She closes her eyes, presses her forehead to the window, unable or unwilling to stop the tears pooling behind her lids, spilling down her cheeks. The door opens behind her, the heavy steps of her husband thudding into the room.

 

“I brought you tea.”

 

She rocks her forehead against the glass, shaking her head. “I don’t want tea. I want answers.”

 

“I know. But what I’ve got right now is tea.”

 

“Fuck the tea.”

 

“Alicia.”

 

“Oh shut up, Robert.” She swallows, hard, against the lump in her throat and turns, presses her shoulders hard against to the glass. Needs to be pressed against something or she’ll shatter and blow away. Her gaze moves past her husband to the figure on the bed. Her boy. Her baby. “Did you know he was drinking?”

 

“I guessed.” He took three strides to place the drinks on the bedside table before shoving a hand through his hair. “It’s not unusual for—“

 

“You know he can’t be drinking on his medication.”

 

“A beer or two—”

 

“At all. He shouldn’t be drinking at all because he’s been on medication since he was 12 to help control his anxiety. Because he has an illness and he needs the medication to manage it.”

 

“Alicia—”

 

“Do you understand that, Bobby? Have you ever? Have you ever really sat down and thought about what it means for him to get up every day and get on that ice despite that? Do you even remember what it was like, before he stopped talking to us about it?” When they would find him, tucked up into the small spaces in the house (the closet, between his bed and the wall, wedged between the tub and the toilet), shaking as he tried to control his breathing.

 

_Sometimes it just gets so loud, Maman._

 

“I thought he was doing better. We both did.”

 

“We both hoped he was.” She caught his gaze, hers eyes dry now, burning. “It was easier for us to think that. And he wasn’t under our roof, so it was easy to ignore all the signs that he wasn’t.”

 

“We couldn’t have known.”

 

“No.” She took a deep breath. Held it. Let it out. “We don’t get to take the easy way out of this. You knew he was drinking. I knew he was unhappy.” Another breath.

 

Hold.

 

Release.

 

“He wasn’t unhappy, he was stressed. It’s the draft, for god’s sake, anyone would be. It’s an incredibly difficult time, when I—”

 

“He’s not you. He’s never been you.”

 

“That wasn’t what I meant.”

 

Inhale.

 

Hold.

 

Release.

 

“When he wakes up,” there’s ice in her blood now, steel instead of bone. When. Not if. “When he wakes up, we do better.”

 

“We don’t know that it was intentional, Alicia. The doctor says that with the alcohol he could have gotten confused, taken too many without meaning to.”

 

“Or he could have passed out before he could take them all. Even if it was your way, how is that better? How is it better that he was drinking so much that he couldn’t take the proper dose of the medication he needed? Or did you miss the part where part of the problem is that he should have had more in that bottle than they found on the ground and pumped out of him?

 

“When he wakes up, _when_ , his mental health takes the priority. Not hockey. Not saving whatever you think can be saved for a career. I’m fully aware of who you were on the phone with in the hallway, when you were so kind to go get me a tea. When he wakes up, it’s about his health first and what he thinks he wants, what you want, second.”

 

“Jesus. You make it sound like I’ve pushed him into this. He loves hockey. You know he loves hockey.”

 

“I know that hockey is his life. I know he loves you. I know—he knows—that you’re never more proud of him than when he’s done something remarkable on the ice. But I don’t know where your dream of a second generation Zimmermann hoisting The Cup above his head ends and his begins. Tell me you do. Tell me you’ve talked to him these last long months and he’s told you what he wants.” He's silent, jaw clenched as he closes his eyes and lets out a long breath.

 

“I didn’t think so.” She lifts a hand, digs her fingers into a temple, hoping to relieve some of the pressure that’s been building. “Bobby. When he wakes up, we do better.”

 

He moves forward, his shoulders drooping as he presses his back to the glass next to her, sliding down to the floor. She drops too, doesn’t move when he shifts to press the line of his arm, his leg, against hers.

 

“When he wakes up,” he murmurs. She nods, leans her head back and closes her eyes.

 

 _When_.

**Author's Note:**

> Edited to fix a couple of mistakes!


End file.
